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While Bbox Bouygues Telecom’s Swiss climber Johan Tschopp stole away for a surprise stage win, Basso calmly resisted a late surge by Michele Scarponi to finish third on the stage and extend his advantage on general classification. David Arroyo, in second place on GC, now trails Basso by one minute 15 seconds.

Basso leads Arroyo 10-1 in head-to-head encounters in time trials. The outcome of their battle in tomorrow’s 15km time trial, and of the Giro, therefore looks a foregone conclusion.

In the battle for the podium places, Scarponi’s late move, two kilometres from the finish-line on the Tonale, has taken him to within a second of Nibali’s third place overall. The Liquigas rider’s vastly superior pedigree against the clock, however, makes it difficult to envisage a last-minute reshuffle. Despite a brilliant late attack to take second on today’s 20th stage, Cadel Evans also looks unlikely to recoup his 51-second deficit from Nibali.

Tschopp, 27, was understandably delighted to have added to a palmarès whose only previous success was a stage in the 2009 Tropicale Amissa Bongo. He dropped breakaway companion Gilberto Simoni on the descent of the Passo di Gavia and rode the final 30 kilometres alone to win by 16 seconds from Evans.

“This is extraordinary,” he gasped. “I have a feeling I'm dreaming. I'm really happy. I'm on another planet. I wouldn't have given away the chance to be first at the top of the Gavia because it was the Cima Coppi (the highest peak of the race), then it put me in a situation of winning. It's fantastic.”

Basso, meanwhile, singled out his team-mate Alessandro Vanotti for praise after another mountain stage dominated by the Liquigas funicular train. He also consoled Nibali. “This is another positive day," Basso said. "We controlled it. Vanotti has done an exceptional job. Everybody knew that Vincenzo Nibali is a champion. A part of this jersey is his.”

How it happened

The day began with confirmation that the 178km race route between Bormio and the Passo Tonale would remain unchanged, in spite of bad weather over the Italian Alps. Hence, there would be no “plan B” featuring the previously untested ascent of the Mortirolo from its north-western side.

Instead, the peloton faced a daunting menu of five climbs, the first four all rising to over 2,000 metres and culminating with the highest climb of the Giro, or Cima Coppi, the 2,621 metre Passo di Gavia.

A more significant period of action then saw Marco Pinotti (HTC-Columbia), Carlos Sastre (Cervelo), Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana), Matthew Lloyd (Omega-Pharma) and Damiano Cunego (Lampre), among others, take flight from the peloton on the Forcola di Livigno. Like the rest of his Giro to date, Cunego’s efforts ended in disappointment - he was dropped on the Forcola and quickly rejoined the main bunch.

Meanwhile, having also been among the early aggressors, Plan de Corones stage-winner Stefano Garzelli abandoned the Giro.

The breakaway was further whittled down on the Passo di Eira and Passo di Foscagno. Riding his final Giro, and today his last Giro mountain stage, Cunego’s Lampre team-mate Simoni briefly led the race when he pulled away with Tschopp five kilometres short of the Gavia’s summit and 35 kilometres from the finish-line. Hopes of a spectacular final flourish from the 2001 and 2003 Giro champion persisted between the walls of snow on the Gavia’s upper slopes.

It at least seemed sure that the last accolade of Simoni’s career would be the prize awarded to the first rider over the Cima Coppi. Alas, Tschopp rather heartlessly outsprinted him over the Gavia’s summit.

The Swiss then accelerated away from Simoni on the narrow, heart-in-mouth descent off the Gavia. Behind, a downhill slalom like David Arroyo’s on the Mortirolo on Friday might have placed Ivan Basso under pressure in the 20-strong group of favourites. Instead, the Spaniard opted to postpone any risks until tomorrow’s final time trial.

By the time he reached Ponte di Legno at the bottom of the valley, and then began the final climb towards the Tonale, Tschopp’s advantage had risen to over a minute. Simoni, meanwhile, was caught by Vinokourov, Vladimir Karpets and Daniele Righi.

While Simoni dropped back and through the Liquigas-driven peloton six kilometres from home, up the road, Vinokourov and Righi kicked away from Karpets and gave chase behind Tschopp. The Bbox climber’s advantage, though, continued to hold.

Meanwhile, a violent attack from Cadel Evans shattered the group of favourites, and might have brought the Australian his second stage win of the Giro had it come a kilometre sooner. As Evans attempted in vain to hunt down Tschopp, Michele Scarponi tried to shake off the Liquigas duo of Basso and Nibali. Nibali eventually buckled, conceding 18 seconds to Scarponi on the line and allowing the Scarponi to draw within a single second of his third place on general classification.

More crucially, Arroyo had also ceded further ground to Basso.

What has been a spectacular and endlessly unpredictable Giro ends tomorrow with a 15km kilometre time trial, its route bisected by the 277 metre Torricelle climb and ending in the shadow of Verona’s roman arena. The last time the Corsa Rosa finished here, also with a time trial in 1984, home favourite Francesco Moser held off Frenchman Laurent Fignon to win his first and only Giro. Now, Moser’s countryman Basso seems almost certain to repeat a 2006 victory that was overshadowed if not completely invalidated by his subsequent involvement in the Operacion Puerto doping scandal.

Speaking prior to the Giro, Italian time trial champion Marco Pinotti predicted that time gaps in excess of thirty seconds between the top riders were unlikely on tomorrow’s course. A final twist in the tale therefore looks improbable, and a Giro which has yielded seven Italian stage winners should provide the tifosi with the home champion they crave.